Field
The present invention generally relates to management of online content, and in particular, is directed towards media content feed format for management of online media content.
Description of the Related Art
The proliferation of web sites that allow users to upload multimedia content for mass viewing has brought with it a number of challenges, not the least of which has been how to detect and handle uploaded content in which other entities have rights.
Under the copyright laws of the United States and multiple other countries, a single work may have multiple copyright holders and various entities may hold other rights with regard to the content. For example, various entities have rights in a song—the author, the publisher, and the music label are just some of the many different entities that may have different rights and each may be entitled to control the use of their work, and/or to receive royalty payments under the various royalty schemes in force in a particular country. Videos have an additional layer of complexity, including, for example, synchronization rights to any music played along with the video.
While Performing Rights Organizations (PROs) such as The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) exist to collect public performance royalties on behalf of the various copyright holders when their works are broadcast on the radio or on television, this type of collection mechanism is not available in the online environment; nor are performance rights sufficient—as noted above, mechanical, master use, synchronization and other rights must also be taken into account.
Furthermore, before appropriate actions can be taken with regard to rights holders, content must be correctly identified. Given the nature of user-generated content (UGC), that is, content provided by users to a web site, detecting content subject to the rights of others has proven to be very difficult. For example, a user may select a commercially available song, which is subject to copyright restrictions, and combine it with homemade video to which the user herself holds the copyright. UGC including, for example, copyrighted video may escape detection by being slightly different, e.g., through cropping or editing, than a reference video.